1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to network-based data privacy policies, and more particularly to a system and method of implementing a secure privacy policy.
2. Related Art
As the amount of information transmitted over networks by businesses, individuals and other entities continues to grow, the ability to guarantee privacy of information has become an ongoing challenge. For example, users that subscribe to a provider's services are often required to disclose sensitive personal information such as credit card information, medical information, family information, etc. The only safeguard available to such users is the privacy policy of the provider. Unfortunately, it is often impractical for an end-user to manually check the privacy policies of each provider that they may encounter, particularly in a network environment such as the Internet where policies can change over time and the actual provider of some service (e.g., credit approval) may be transparent to the end-user.
To address this, automated privacy policy matching systems have been proposed that compare the privacy requirements of a user with the privacy policy of each provider to ensure that the privacy rights of the user are maintained. In such systems, data is only released if the privacy constraints of the user can be met. Thus, as long as he or she trust the parties he or she deals with, an end-user can be confident that any entity collecting their personal data will not use the data in manner that is proscribed by the end-user. Such a system is described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/046,034, filed on Nov. 7, 2001, entitled “System, Method, and Business Methods for Enforcing Privacy Preferences on Personal-Data Exchanges Across a Network,” which is hereby incorporated by reference.
Unfortunately, the efficacy of such privacy policy matching systems is completely dependent on the integrity of the people and organizations that provide the services, or otherwise have access to the data. For instance, even though a provider may guarantee data will not be used or sold without the consent of the end-user, there is nothing to prevent an employee of the service provider from stealing personal information. Accordingly, present matching systems may not always provide the necessary level of security to guarantee privacy.
Particular issues arise for individuals who want to either store data at a secure data repository, or who need to provide their data to a third party subject to a privacy policy. In these cases, like those mentioned above, the mere fact that the involved entities have a privacy policy and/or a matching system does not guard against outright theft and/or tampering. In particular, even if the party the end user is dealing with is reputable and has adopted a good privacy policy system, nothing prevents indelicate agents from tempering with or stealing private data. Accordingly, a need exists for a privacy policy system that includes the necessary security to ensure data privacy for individuals disclosing private information.